Nutritional compositions can be, for instance, infant formulas or also nutritional liquids for toddlers, invalids, elderly people, persons having nutritional deficiencies or athletes.
In general, different forms in which nutritional compositions may be provided exist, each of them having their own advantages.
For instance, although the nutritional composition provided in a powder form have a relative high nutritional quality, the preparation thereof may be regarded as inconvenient and time consuming, since water which has been boiled in advanced and allowed to cool has to be poured into a drinking vessel containing the powder in order to prepare a liquid nutritional composition such as an infant formula. The same inconvenient preparation process exists for nutritional compositions in concentrated liquid form.
A more convenient preparation of a nutritional composition is enabled by capsule-based preparation devices in which a single-serving of a preferably powdered composition being provided within a cartridge or capsule is dissolved by means of injection with filtered sanitized liquid such as water. Thereby, any undesired contaminants should be removed from the liquid before the liquid is mixed with the ingredients. For this purpose, such a device preferably comprises filter means for filtering, e.g., sanitizing, the water.
WO2006/077259 for example discloses a method for preparing a single serving of a nutritional composition comprising introducing liquid such as water into a cartridge containing a unit dose, e.g., a single-serving of the composition in concentrated form. Thereby, the water is treated prior to the introduction into the cartridge in order to remove pathogens from the water. This treatment may be for instance a pre-heating, a filtering or an irradiation of the water with ultra-violet light.
WO 008/012314 relates to a device that teaches the principle of treating water by means of a filter used for the preparation of nutritional compositions from a capsule inserted in a dispenser.
A capsule with an integrated antimicrobial filter has been described in WO 2009/092629 and No. 09156782.6 filed on 31 Mar. 2009.
In the known prior art, the nutritional ingredients are generally provided in powdered form within a body portion, specifically a dedicated compartment within such a capsule. The interaction of the ingredients and provided liquid preferably takes place within the capsule, specifically within the dedicated ingredients compartment of the capsule. Thereby, the opening of the usually sealed capsule is obtained by means of a beverage production machine to which the capsule is provided and which is equipped with dedicated opening means.
However, this known method suffers the drawback that for the preparation of the nutritional composition a dedicated beverage production machine is required. However, these beverage production machines are generally not portable and not available in any given place at which the consumer may wish to prepare a nutritional composition. Moreover, the capsule itself does usually not comprise any opening means in order to prevent a user from accidently opening the capsule.
Hence, there is the need for enabling an opening of the capsule by the consumer independent of the beverage production machine.
In particular, the consumer of the nutritional ingredients may wish to open the capsule in order to serve the ingredients to a provided receiving vessel or receptacle such that the consumer is enabled to manually prepare the nutritional composition by means of reconstitution of the ingredients without a beverage production machine, e.g. upon addition of a suitable liquid such as water to the ingredients provided to the receiving vessel.
Moreover, the user may wish to individually choose the dosage, specifically the amount of nutritional ingredients to be served, into a dedicated receiving vessel.
Thus, a portable system is sought-after which enables a consumer to conveniently transport and serve nutritional ingredients contained within a capsule or cartridge.
The present invention seeks to address the above-described problem. The invention also aims at other objects and particularly the solution of other problems as will appear in the rest of the present description.